Introduction: Shadow Hunters
The alien sky was in turmoil. Angry dark clouds rolled across the sky, and rain pelted down upon the rainforest below. The chaos imperials sheltered next to a fire under a large tree, its vines reaching up to lofty heights whilst the rain pattered. The blood guard soldiers were on the look out. They had seen the way of chaos only a few months before, and had been dropped on this planet to spread the word of the almighty blood god to the small humanoids that apparently colonised small villages around here, but so far had remained hidden.
Ever since they had been dropped on this mysterious planet, things had gone wrong. It was as if the very environment had come alive. Food would go missing, and people too. In the recent days, the number of guard from this men's squad had been whittled down to just 4.
They had been separated from their battalion for a few hours now, and the clouds were affecting their radios. It was as if this planet did not want them to get out of here alive. Suddenly, one of the guardsmen sat up and looked around.
'Something's watching us…' he whispered in a low growl. There was a long silence around the small fire. The wind blew strongly, and all the guard shivered. Suddenly, a flash of green raced through the bushes to their left, and the guard blasted the shrubbery with lasgun fire.
Above them, a lithe figure held his rifle high, and scythed the long, reaping blade down into one of the guard's neck. The chaos trooper tried to scream, but only blood spurted from his mouth, and around the blade in his neck. The other guardsmen could only watch in horror as he was lifted up into the air. Whipping around, they heard a sharp hiss, and what appeared to be two dogs raced from the bushes and leapt at two more of the guard's necks. The last soldier tried two shoot the muscular canine figures, but they were too fast. With a yell of horror, he fled through the bushes, trying to get away from the images of horror in his mind.
Suddenly he emerged in a leafy glade, which was sheltered from the storm above. Staring around intently, he tried to make out the shadowy figures that had butchered his squad mates with such ease. A sound caught his ear, like the slight hiss of steel cutting through the air. With a razor-sharp 'shkkkk' abladed disc sliced through the end of his weapon, cutting it into two. The guard dropped his weapon like it was a poisonous snake, and watched as the blade went spinning back into the darkness. The guard yelled out desperately: 'Come on, show yourself you cowards! Face me like a man'. With a guttural shriek, a sinewy, lizard-like figure emerged from the dark of the night.
It advanced towards him, and spoke in an alien language that sounded like a shrieking cry. Although the guard could not understand, its
identity was all too clear. He had fought these things before, back when he had believed in the foolish god-emperor. They had been a subservient culture in a highly advanced alien race called the Tau, and were as ruthless as they were savage. He fell to his knees in realisation of the horror that awaited the entire battalion of other unknowing troopers on this world. He watched with absolute terror as the Kroot shaper leapt high, swinging his two blades in a scissor like fashion, as he landed on the soldier's chest and chopping his head clean off his neck. Landing gracefully back on the floor, he shrieked into the air in a blood rage. 3 other kroot warriors leapt out of the bushes, and the two kroot hound ran forward, dragging the bodies of the fallen guard with them. With growling and hissing, the Kroot fed on the bodies of their kills, absorbing the guards DNA and incorporating their traits into the Kroots own genetic structure.
The next generation of Kroot would now be more knowledgeable of humans and their behaviour. With the shaper's job done, he ordered his band and his hounds back into the jungle, to scout out the rest of their prey a few miles to the north. They would make the guard pay for the destruction of their precious jungle, and for coming so close to finding their kindred that lived in wooden structures high in the trees.
As the brutal aliens darted of into the trees, the storm raged on, blowing away the remains of the troopers and erasing anything that had ever shown that the guard had been here at all.